The NBA and WNBA are changing up how viewers watch their games–including an 11-year, $20 billion deal with Amazon Prime Video.
Together, the leagues announced around $76 billion worth of rights deals July 24, covering the next 11 seasons of gameplay. Those deals will have Disney (which owns ESPN and ABC) pay $2.6 billion per year for rights to air games, NBC paying $2.5 billion, and Amazon getting the deal of the day with $1.8 billion. Amazon and NBC are new partners for the leagues, while former longtime partner TNT has been dropped, with parent company Warner Bros. Discovery already considering a lawsuit because it thinks it has the right to match Amazon’s deal.
TNT has had exclusive air deals with the NBA since 1989, but negotiations fell through for it to extend its contract beyond 2025. With it out of the running, legacy media companies ended up in a bidding war, with streaming services like Apple+, Netflix, and victor Prime Video all vying for a chunk of the ever-growing digital sports viewership market.
Amazon will pay $1.8 billion annually for the rights to air:
Those rights are global, so Prime subscribers around the world will have access starting in 2025 for the NBA, and 2026 for the WNBA. Charlie Neiman, Amazon Prime Video’s Director of Sports Partnerships, says the streamer has also secured rights to sell the NBA and WNBA League Passes, which is similar to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket. (Remember how hard YouTube fought for the rights to that?
)Per the Washington Post, Amazon will air Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night games, with NBCUniversal’s Peacock broadcasting Monday night games and NBC airing Sunday and Tuesday night games, as well as the All-Star Game.
This isn’t Amazon’s first foray into sports programming. It’s been broadcasting NFL games since 2017, and in 2021 secured a $1 billion/season deal to create the league’s first-ever digital package.
Amazon also isn’t alone in pursuing sports rights. Like we said, digital sports programming is an ever-growing business, and more and more content platforms and streaming services are getting in on it. YouTube is paying $2 billion a year for the rights to Sunday Ticket, and has had several exclusive deals with the MLB. Netflix just spent $5 billion on 10 years of WWE Raw. NBCUniversal is practically begging for the Paris Olympics content to boost Peacock’s numbers. These companies recognize the power of fandoms, and they know sports have some of the biggest, most dedicated fandoms out there. They’re hoping that fervor will translate to cash.
Why else might platforms want to pursue sports? We think this insight from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian sums things up pretty well:
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